GAZA STRIP/PALESTINE: You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12–year–old Palestinian–American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.

The story bounces from Palestine to Jordan and Lebanon, and eventually to Brooklyn.

I hope by then we can talk about meeting at Cedar's for a reunion meal, but, we will take things slowly.